


we had this big wide city all to ourselves

by girl0nfire



Series: we burn in dreams [3]
Category: Marvel, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Angsty Schmoop, M/M, Superhusbands, post-nightmare cuddling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-27
Updated: 2012-10-27
Packaged: 2017-11-17 03:17:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/547054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girl0nfire/pseuds/girl0nfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They manage the darkness together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we had this big wide city all to ourselves

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Taylor Swift's "Holy Ground".

In your dreams, you’re always lucid.

It’s why you spend so much time working in the shop, pushing yourself to the limits of your mind and beyond them, because the deadened exhaustion it brings you is sometimes enough to stop the buzzing in your veins when you finally do collapse.

But more often, it’s not enough. No amount of fatigue is enough to keep you safe from what’s locked up inside of your own head, and more nights than you’d like to count there you are, trapped. The minute sleep takes you, with one long exhale and the sensation of falling, you wake up again, blinking in the light.

Alone. Alive and thinking, feeling, except you’re always confined. Paralyzed underneath the weight of the rest your body craves, laid out in your dreams like a sacrifice for whatever demons your mind unleashes in the night. And your mind is clever; it’s never the same, the terror constantly shifting, every horror and every injury tessellating through your mind. Every combination, every permutation of every life you’ve ever had a hand in ending; in your sleep you sit on a throne of missiles rigged to explode and your heart’s the trigger, wired up to the car battery settled at your feet. Some nights, the beat of your heart is so loud in your ears that you swear it’s going to burst from your chest, but when you raise a hand to your chest to still it, there’s nothing but a gaping hole.

You fight, or you try, bloody knuckles and blood underneath your fingernails and blood _everywhere_ as you rage and tear your way away and out. But you’re too smart; there’s no way that the mind of Tony Stark is so easy to defeat. For every terror you chase away, three more replace it, and every night you find yourself staggering beneath the weight of the horror your mind unleashes.

It’s not as if you have a shortage of monsters to battle, anyway. You’re lucky if there’s only one clawing at your skin at a time – only one knife in your back, only one set of hands inside your chest. And for every time you try to give in, for every pained whimper that leaves your lips, you attack yourself for your own weakness double. Sometimes you watch Pepper’s lips turn blue as Obadiah’s hand wraps around her throat; other times you watch the Stark Industries logo glint on the side of the missile aimed at Rhodes’ plane.

Sometimes you watch scarlet stain the white stripes of Steve’s uniform and you can never, ever get the gauntlets off quickly enough to clutch at his hand before it’s cold.

In your dreams, you’re never, _ever_ fast enough.

Because that’s what it really is, isn’t it? Aren’t dreams just the wars we wage against ourselves, laying out our fears like dominoes and tipping them over, waiting for the end to come so we can start again? Watching the steady progression, the interconnected horror of everything you’ve ever dreaded, working together to drag you deeper. Anxiety and loathing mix in your mind, and it thunders through your veins on the current of your pulse, your whole body shaking with it.

You’re always lucid, always experiencing every torment in real-time, and all the while you laugh at your own weakness in a voice that could be a scream.

+

It’s not the tossing and turning that wakes Steve, but the silence. Tony’s never completely quiet, not even in his sleep, his soft huffs and sighs as much a part of a one-sided conversation as his daytime mumbles to himself. At times like this, though, Steve will wake to find him taut and motionless, flat on his back, a sheen of sweat on his neck and his voice gone, the short gasps of his breaths the only sound accompanying the rapid rise and fall of his chest.

Time stills. Steve’s seen this enough by now to know that there’s nothing he can do until Tony wakes; he’d tried, once, to reach out and pull Tony from whatever horror he was drowning in, but the only result had been Tony’s fist connecting with Steve’s jaw, breaking three of his fingers. So, Steve sits up, tugging the chain of the lamp on his bedside table, the warm glow of the light throwing the hard lines of worry on Tony’s face into sharp relief. Gently, careful not to touch him, Steve moves to gather the blankets from where they’ve wound around Tony’s legs, pulling them free and depositing them in a heap at the foot of the bed.

Settling back on his knees, all Steve can do is wait. As he does, he traces the straining muscles of Tony’s neck with his gaze, memorizing where Tony will be sore the next day so he can dig the knots out later. He watches the dark shadows of fear flit across Tony’s face, his eyebrows furrowed like he’s trying to work out a difficult problem; he watches his hands clench into white-knuckled fists in the loose sheet beneath him.

Tony’s lip curls into a snarl, and a feral look overtakes his features, his teeth bared and his forehead creasing, a trickle of sweat tracking down the cords of his neck. Suddenly, Tony’s shoulders give a rough jerk, and his hands unclench from the sheets and fly to his chest, a growl tearing its way out of his throat. Two palms press flat against the bare flesh surrounding the reactor, shielding it from whatever invisible foe has invaded Tony’s mind tonight.

Before he can stop himself, Steve reaches out, a short, aborted movement. But it’s almost over now; Steve brings the hand back to scrub down his face, letting out a sigh as he waits for the worst of it – as he waits for Tony’s nightmare to drag him so close to reality that he wakes, disoriented and gasping, grappling against imagined attackers and still alone in the dark. 

As Steve watches, Tony’s hands flex, ten fingers spread wide across his chest. They drag across the reactor, scratching, leaving eight trails that flush pink and leak scarlet, Tony desperately reaching to rip out wires that aren’t there. With a rush of breath, Tony wakes, his whole body drawn up in one sharp convulsion as he jerks his hands away to shield his face.

Tony’s breathing doesn’t slow, but Steve hangs back as Tony rolls to his side, away from the weak light of the bedside lamp, and curls into himself, arms raised over his head.

“ _No_.”

The word comes out weak and broken, the single syllable drug through anxiety and exhaustion and fear before it escapes Tony’s lips, drifting out from under his arms to settle heavily on Steve. 

Slowly, Steve shifts from his knees, moving closer to Tony.

“Tony.”

Steve remembers the first time he’d ever had a nightmare in Tony’s bed. He remembers being wrenched out of the black-and-white ice of his mind to two wild brown eyes staring down at him, two shaking hands fisted in the collar of his t-shirt. Steve remembers how Tony had pulled him close, settled him against his chest, stroking his sweat-dampened hair as the dim glow of the reactor filtered behind Steve’s squeezed-shut eyes. There hadn’t been any words spoken between them save Steve’s name, Tony whispering it into his hair in a litany, and just hearing its syllables safe in Tony’s mouth had been an anchor.

Since then, that was what they did. It was how they managed the darkness together; even after Tony’s bed became their bed, after Steve had stopped dreaming of ice and started dreaming of a blue light that flickered into darkness, after Tony’s broken fingers had healed, this was how they carried one another when the other was weak.

Steve touches Tony’s shoulder lightly, just his fingertips brushing against the curve of his neck, and uses the steadiest voice he can.

“ _Tony_.”

Another jerk, and Tony pulls away from the touch, his legs curling further toward his chest and his arms coming down to circle them, pulling them closer. Tony doesn’t speak, intent on making himself as small as possible, shifting his body close to the edge of the mattress as Steve watches his back heave with forced-calm breaths. For a few moments, the only sound in their room is a hushed, grating sound as Tony tries to drag more air in, tries to slow the short gasps into longer inhales. Finally, Steve watches a bit of the tension slip from between Tony’s shoulder blades as he seems to sag inward, crumpling without the stiffness of fear to prop him up.

Steve tries again, wrapping a sturdy hand around the sharp point of Tony’s shoulder. He decides against saying his name again, and instead waits for Tony to speak.

Another few moments, Tony’s breathing still ragged but finally even, and then Tony’s voice cracks the last of Steve’s resolve.

“I can’t get out.”

Willing himself to keep his hand still, Steve swallows thickly before he replies. It’s not like Tony to volunteer information about his dreams; well, it’s not like Steve to, either. 

“What do you mean? You’re out. You’re awake now.”

Another breath. Steve can feel Tony’s pulse racing through his veins, thudding beneath his fingertips as they graze the man’s collarbone.

“Doesn’t matter. Anywhere with four walls and _I can’t get out_.”

And maybe Steve understands that feeling a little too well, being trapped inside places that are too familiar, or maybe he just gets not wanting to talk about it. Either way, he may not be able to calm Tony’s pulse or wipe the creases from his forehead, but he _can_ try to get him out. He can try to be the one set of hands that pull Tony up, instead of the hundreds of pairs that drag him through his dreams.

Steve turns his back to Tony, swinging his legs off the bed to stand and circling the bed to Tony’s side. The other man doesn’t meet his gaze, his eyes still half-lidded and faraway, and he doesn’t make a move to unfold himself as Steve reaches for him. Gently, Steve slides one arm beneath Tony’s shoulders, the other underneath his bent knees, and lifts him from the mattress. A soft sound of surprise escapes Tony’s lips, his body dead weight in Steve’s arms, but as Steve begins a slow walk to the door of their bedroom, Tony lifts his arms hesitantly to wrap around Steve’s neck. 

Tony buries his head against Steve’s chest, still silent, clinging to Steve as if he’s the only solid thing Tony knows, and maybe right now, he is. Steve readjusts his arms to cradle Tony closer, and one of the man’s still-shaking hands grips the neck of Steve’s t-shirt; Steve can feel a warm stuttering of breath ghost along his neck as he pads down the hall. He bypasses the elevators; he knows that won’t help with the feeling of being trapped, and besides, he’s seen the footage. He’s watched Tony drag himself into an elevator just like this one, straining to push a button above his head as the hole in his chest pushes death deeper and deeper into his heart.

_No_. Steve shakes his head, pushing the video loop of Tony’s pale face out of his mind.

No elevators.

Instead, he shoulders the access door open, careful not to jostle Tony, and starts to climb the cement stairs that lead to the roof. The concrete is cool against his bare feet, and it’s only ten flights between their floor and the observation deck, so Steve climbs quickly as Tony’s hands slowly stop shaking, his breaths tangling in the hair at the nape of Steve’s neck.

At the top, Steve leans to type in the security code for roof access, the lock clicking open and the door swinging open automatically as he does so. The observation deck of Stark Tower is Steve’s favorite part of the building; when he first came here, he would spend his nights at the edge of the roof, all of Park Avenue spread out before him, and memorize the patterns of this new New York. He retaught himself the city from here; traced the dark valleys of the avenues and counted the buildings he could remember, and the ones he couldn’t. He would watch the city glitter and pulse at his feet, alive and moving even as everyone slept, humming and thriving and rebuilding. When Grand Central Station had reopened after the Chitauri Invasion, Steve had taken two days to draw it, dragging a chair to the railing and tracing the new lines of sculpture first with pencil, and then with ink. Shading in the curves, smudging the edges, Steve had felt the fledgling hope of the rebuilt city take root as he finished.

That’s the drawing that still hangs in Tony’s office. The drawing that Steve had given him their first Christmas together, with that same trembling hope in his heart.

A warm breeze lifts Tony’s hair, the dark strands tossing together and brushing against Steve’s chin as Steve continues his path toward the railing at the edge of the roof. There are a few lounge chairs, a small table - all things that had mysteriously arrived on the roof a few days after it had become apparent that Steve enjoyed spending time up here. Steve settles into one of the larger ones, shifting his arms to settle Tony more securely against his chest as he leans back and puts his feet up.

They stay like that, Tony curled against Steve, his bare feet tucked between Steve’s knees, for a long while. Steve traces his fingertips along Tony’s spine, sketching idle patterns across his shoulder blades, listening to Tony’s breathing even out. He’s certain that Tony’s fallen asleep again, his cheek pressed in the crook of Steve’s neck, and Steve’s halfway there himself when Tony speaks again, his voice barely a whisper against Steve’s skin.

“You got me out.”

Steve doesn’t respond, he wouldn’t know where to begin, so instead he tightens the hand that’s resting on Tony’s hip, shifting them closer together, dragging his fingertips up Tony’s spine once more to cup the back of his neck. He dips his head to press a kiss against the now hopeless tangle of Tony’s hair, keeping the man tight in his embrace. Tony reaches to slip his fingers between Steve’s at his side, and settles his weight fully against Steve’s chest, all tension drained from his body.

And this is how they keep back the lonely darkness, even in the midst of a living, breathing, sparkling city – alone, together, under the vast sky reflecting every ambulance light and glittering skyscraper back at them, arms held tight and hands twined together, dragging each other out and pulling each other up, searching and finding and _keeping_.

So they sleep, one dream of an unending city of stars shared between them.


End file.
